Once a year or so, I get the crazy idea that I want to build a small form factor PC.
It’s not the actual small form factor system that’s crazy. It’s what I want it to do. What I typically want is to build a high performance gaming system using a micro ATX motherboard, building it into a micro ATX chassis. I’m typically lured in by some cool looking micro ATX case. That happened to me with a couple of Silverstone SUGO models (SG01 and SG03). Most recently, it was the NZXT Vulcan, which I reviewed for Maximum PC. The Vulcan is actually a good looking case with an attractive feature set that makes it sound like a badass, high end case.
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Shall we build a system?
Recently, I decided it was time to replace one of the gaming rigs in my office LAN. On most Fridays, my LAN party group gets together for what we affectionately call “Friday Night Follies.” I usually build systems out of older parts for the LAN party systems, which are generally good enough for the games we play.
This time around, though, I wanted to build something a little more current. So I decided to build a compact system based around Gigabyte’s P55-UD4 micro ATX motherboard and a Core i5 750. Part of my rationale was to test long term stability. You can run all the benchmarks in the world, but there’s nothing quite like hammering on a system in a current generation multiplayer game to really test system stability.
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